Bad hockey equals bad results for the Canucks

Failure to string together three straight wins may come back to haunt them

The look on Vancouver Canucks goalie Ryan Miller’s face says it all as he skates in front of the net during a break in play against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday at Rogers Arena. The Canucks returned from winning both ends of a two-game road trip to fall 5-2 to the Leafs, and look horrid in doing so.

Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann
, PNG

The Columbus Blue Jackets have done it. So have the Edmonton Oilers and Buffalo Sabres. Even the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Vancouver Canucks find themselves in select company as one of only two National Hockey League teams — the Winnipeg Jets are the other — not to have managed to win three straight games this season.

How can you expect to make playoffs if you can’t string together three consecutive wins? The answer is, you really can’t.

The Canucks blew their latest chance for three straight Ws with perhaps their most disappointing effort of the season on Saturday night, when they lost 5-2 to the last-place Leafs at Rogers Arena.

“That is why we are where we are,” winger Jannik Hansen said after the team practised Sunday at Britannia. “There’s a reason we haven’t secured a playoff spot or are fighting for home ice. It’s because we haven’t been consistent enough. We have played good hockey, but we have also played bad hockey. That’s the tough part of being an average team. You are going to have average results.”

The Canucks played bad hockey on Saturday night versus the Leafs and it couldn’t have come at a worst possible time. They had just returned from winning two road games in Colorado and Arizona, which had moved them back into the playoff hunt. It looked like the Canucks might finally have some momentum on their side.

But instead they were embarrassed on home ice — where they have struggled all season — by a Leafs team with a makeshift roster.

By the 10-minute mark of the second period, the Leafs had outshot the Canucks 30-10.

Teams like to move on from a loss and look ahead to the next game, but Daniel Sedin acknowledged that is much more difficult after a performance like Saturday’s.

“That one stinks, for sure,” Sedin said. “It is always tough to lose but you can take a loss if you feel like you put the effort in and have done everything you can to get the win. But when it looks like it did yesterday, that’s really disappointing. And it wasn’t one or two guys, it was a lot of guys that weren’t ready to play ... if you can’t win three in a row, that’s a problem.”

The Canucks have failed to win three straight games in only three previous seasons: 1970-71, 1976-77 and 1998-99. They missed the playoffs in all three seasons.

“We are not going to make the playoffs if you bring the effort we did yesterday,” Daniel said. “That’s the bottom line.”

The Canucks now find themselves in what might best be described as no man’s land, stuck halfway between a playoff spot and a crack at a top-five draft pick.

They trail the third-place Anaheim Ducks by six points and are five points out of a wild-card playoff berth. They are seven points clear of the Leafs, who are 30th overall in the NHL, and six points up on the Oilers, who hold down last place in the West.

Saturday’s no-show may have been enough to convince general manager Jim Benning to switch into sell mode with the NHL trade deadline now just two weeks away.

Coach Willie Desjardins acknowledged that Saturday’s loss was one of the most disappointing of the season for his team.

“It sure changes the mood quick,” Desjardins said. “You are coming off two wins and we had a stretch where maybe we didn’t win those games at home (last week) but we deserved to win them the way we were playing. So we have been playing pretty good and I think things were pretty positive. The guys felt we were playing the right way.

“(But) Toronto came in and played hard and we didn’t seem quite prepared for that. ... It wasn’t a good outing for us. We have to learn from that, we can’t just walk away from it.”

Desjardins will make at least two lineup changes tonight when the Canucks play host to the Minnesota Wild at Rogers Arena. Rookie winger Alex Friesen, recently called up from Utica, will play his first NHL game. Emerson Etem is expected to be a healthy scratch. Jacob Markstrom is expected to start in goal.

RECENT RUN

The Canucks are coming off one of their most disappointing performances of the season. They were terrible in Saturday night’s 5-2 home-ice loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Terrible doesn’t begin to describe the recent play of Vancouver’s next opponent. The Minnesota Wild have lost eight straight games and 13 of their last 14 outings. The Wild fired coach Mike Yeo after Saturday’s 4-2 home-ice loss to the Boston Bruins.

POWER SHUFLE

Yannick Weber is out and rookie Ben Hutton is in as the latest quarterback on the Canucks‘ first power-play unit. Hutton joined Sven Baertschi, Linden Vey and Daniel and Henrik Sedin as the latest first unit at Sunday’s practice. The Canuck power play has gone 0-for-9 in the last four games and is 1-for-20 in the last 11 games. It ranks 27th in the NHL at 16.2 per cent.

HEAD TO HEAD

This is the third and final meeting of the season with the Wild. The Canucks got two goals from Radim Vrbata in a 3-2 road win on Nov. 25. But the Wild beat the Canucks 6-2 at the Xcel Energy Center on Dec. 15. Jannik Hansen and Daniel Sedin scored the Canuck goals in that game. Last season, the Wild won two of three meetings with the Canucks.

NOTABLE

Mikko Koivu leads Minnesota with 39 points (11 goals, 28 assists) in 51 career games against the Canucks. Koivu has one goal and five assists in two games versus the Canucks this season. . .Henrik Sedin has 65 points (12 goals, 53 assists) in 79 games versus Minnesota. . .The Wild are 7-3-0 in their last 10 games against the Canucks. . .Wild defenceman Ryan Suter is averaging 28:48 of ice time per game. That is second highest in the NHL.

NEW COACH

The Wild have named John Torchetti, who was coach of their AHL affiliate in Iowa, their interim head coach. Torchetti ran his first practice on Sunday before the team flew to Vancouver: “We are a family and we had a bump in the road and we lost a good soldier and now we’ve got to get back on track,” he said. Torchetti was also briefly interim head coach of both the Florida Panthers and Los Angeles Kings.

The look on Vancouver Canucks goalie Ryan Miller’s face says it all as he skates in front of the net during a break in play against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday at Rogers Arena. The Canucks returned from winning both ends of a two-game road trip to fall 5-2 to the Leafs, and look horrid in doing so.

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